Dubara Palace

The Dubara Palace is located at the Simon Bolivar square in the north part of the Garden City district in downtown Cairo, Egypt.

Modeled after Central European hotels particulier in the same genre, Villa Casdagli, now a decaying relic of the past, was built during the first decade of the 20th century by Austrian architect Edward Matasek (1867-1912) reportedly for account of Emanuel Casdagli, a British educated Levantine family of Anatolian Greek origins as the name would suggest, dealing in the lucrative export import trade exporting cotton to England and importing Manchester textiles.

But in March 1947 things changed, when, acting on instructions of the American State Department, US Ambassador Somerville Pinkney Tuck purchased part of the present day embassy compound.

5 Kasr al-Walda Pasha Street (later Amrika al-Latinia St.), Pinkey Tuck's new quarters were a stone's throw from Villa Casdagli.

Over the years and as American interests in Egypt expanded, the State Department purchased the contiguous properties including Villa Rolo which had also been built by Matasek.

The No 7 Sheikh al Arbain was first leased to Mohamed Mahmoud Pacha, Minister of Finance of Egypt and then to the German Legation in Cairo[3] In his younger days, Villa Casdagli's architect worked and apprenticed for a number of famous Austrian architects including Joseph von Wieser, Arnold Lotz, Ferdinand Fellner and Herman Helmer.

It was most probably at the recommendation of Max Herz Bey, the Khedivial court's rising architect, that Matasek took part in the design of the Egyptian display for the 1892 (3?)

By now Herz was firmly entrenched in the architectural annals of Egypt having built, restored and written about, several of Cairo's most distinguished monuments including the Islamic Museum and the Credit Foncier Bank on Abdelkhalek Sarwat Street.

It would also be perceived as part of the city's effort to repair the moral and physical damage caused by decades of neglectful municipal administration and the onslaught of developers.

Midan Kasr al-Dubara (now Simón Bolívar) could become one of Cairo's most creditable landmarks bringing together the great liberator of South America, a restored Central European hotel particulier, the Mosque of Omar Makram where Egypt's rich and famous are chronically mourned, several infitah banks, the Semiramis Intercontinental Hotel and the dreaded Mogamaa building, a potent symbol of Egypt's titanic bureaucracy.